Once in awhile, I'll find a book or series that I wish I had written - Harry Potter (both brilliant in writing, but billions in revenue is good as well!), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (great comedy and characters), and just a handful of others. This book joins that list. Mike Smith is the "Miracle Boy", traumatized by an event in his past that has left him literally speechless. This oddity places him outside his peers in school, and during his time alone, he learns to pick locks. This talent, exposed to the wrong people, gets him entwined in several heists and enslaved to a criminal enterprise that contacts him through several coded pagers - he is a "boxman", a safeecracker, for hire. The book is written in the first-person, so although Mike never speaks, the reader really gets to see and understand his emotions as the book progresses. Most of those emotions concern Amelia, his first love met while serving a sentence with her father. Their connection is forged through Mike's other talent, drawing, an ability shared by Amelia. This is one of those great books where a complex plot is really enhanced by brilliant characters, and I'm hoping that the author's backlist is similarly fantastic, as I've just ordered all of his past books!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The Lock Artist - Steve Hamilton
Once in awhile, I'll find a book or series that I wish I had written - Harry Potter (both brilliant in writing, but billions in revenue is good as well!), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (great comedy and characters), and just a handful of others. This book joins that list. Mike Smith is the "Miracle Boy", traumatized by an event in his past that has left him literally speechless. This oddity places him outside his peers in school, and during his time alone, he learns to pick locks. This talent, exposed to the wrong people, gets him entwined in several heists and enslaved to a criminal enterprise that contacts him through several coded pagers - he is a "boxman", a safeecracker, for hire. The book is written in the first-person, so although Mike never speaks, the reader really gets to see and understand his emotions as the book progresses. Most of those emotions concern Amelia, his first love met while serving a sentence with her father. Their connection is forged through Mike's other talent, drawing, an ability shared by Amelia. This is one of those great books where a complex plot is really enhanced by brilliant characters, and I'm hoping that the author's backlist is similarly fantastic, as I've just ordered all of his past books!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment